(8) ⓼ ❽ 8︎⃣ ㏧ 捌 ㊇ 8️⃣ index-card-challenges-in-a-row 🚀 8 summers of small format art. 8 summers of friendship + creative camaraderie out in ICADlandia. And yeah, we’re well into the ICAD off-season, but if you haven’t had a chance🍹🌈💥 take a moment to 🎆 snap a photo of your ICADs and magnetize to your fridge or upload to instagram or tack [Fun Fact: In Texas they’re called push pins and in PA they are thumb tacks] to your cork board.

At the end of the Index-Card-a-Day Challenge my tradition is to look back through the cards that I created [like a treasure hunt] and look for starting points for future work. And by that I mean ideas that I could theoretically [wish to] explore in greater depth or on a larger surface. Or a different small surface.

You guys have been leaving heart-warming comments for many days at instagram and FB and I appreciate and read every word. I don't have the bandwidth to reply to every comment but I do my best! I am PROUD of you and I love watching your work bloom and grow with magic sparkles and glittery stardust.

When I started art journaling about 11 years ago, collage was something that I found intriguing, but I couldn't grasp the "why" of collage. What made a collage so visually appealing? So I tried to figure it out. And really, I just created a lot of freaking collages. Thousands. I couldn't even guesstimate, and it doesn't matter really. It's just to say that I create collage in an intuitive way, but not in a logical brain sort of way. Maybe that's why it feels like a very good form of mental escape.

Oh my gosh! You are doing amazing things all around the land of ICAD!!! I'm seeing SO much art flowing every day! Wow! Congrats for doing what it takes to keep your {interest, adrenalin, energy} going strong since we started in June. I've found the challenge to be such fun this year - the art break is good for all of us, isn't it? I hope that you have been able to use ICAD as a way to refresh and reboot something wonderful in terms of your creative work!

This week was all about mandalas! You can see the first half of the drawings here! It got a little crazy, and I did three cards on the last day of mandala week! More mandalas again, plus a mini-review of the Platinum Preppy fountain pen ⤵️ that I really like!

Ⓜ️andalas & geometric patterns 🙃 are our themes for Week 5️⃣ of the Index-Card-a-Day Challengewhere our goal is to make 61 cards in 61 days, at the pace of ONE per DAY! I've done 4 Instagram Lives this week where we did mandala draw-alongs, and I hope you caught one of them! Be sure to follow me at @gypsy999 to catch future arty fun.

A big realization this week? I've been focusing on ⓢⓜⓐⓛⓛ art all year!!! Yup -- 3x5" for ICAD and 3x3" for 365 Somethings. So if I start a painting after ICAD it will feel as vast as a mural, right? Anyhow... this week I’m exploring an idea generated in my 365 Somethings Project.